Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.

Just a quick update to present my character, who has been working tirelessly to keep secrets through the naturally occurring persuasive properties of the shotgun and dual pistols.

And yes, the astute amongst you many have noticed the subtle badge on her jacket. I am indeed playing a Templar, and just in case any one was wondering why, I suppose I’d better post this again:
I have to say it’s been an incredibly smooth launch by Funcom so far. There have been a few understandable hiccoughs due to the initial server load, with ‘pre-order’ items taking a while to turn up in one’s inventory, and the servers throwing the occasional thread-fart, but otherwise it’s been a surprisingly painless initial sortie. Such has been my experience, at least.
Now, back to keeping those secrets. So many secrets; so many keepers who aren’t me. I’m going to need a lot of ammunition.

8 thoughts on “Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.”

Can’t decide to start now or wait a month or two, enjoyed the beta but would prefer if a few more of the obvious bugs were ironed out. Hoping they reconsider the quest limit, 3 primary and 7 secondary missions at a time would be much more workable, and allow paused quests to be reactivated anytime, anywhere. Oh and redo the jump animation for males.

I’m waiting a month or two. I’ve made it a bit of personal policy now, never to buy an MMO for launch, but always wait for the tricky bits to get ironed out first.

I think Funcom’s really stepped their quality up a notch, but it’ll take some hands-on reviews by many, many people to help me decide. They’ve got a good game here, and a very smooth run so far. The question is, is it good enough?

My biggest worry with TSW, is the mid-game. Once you’ve seen all the beautiful scripted, animated, voiced cutscenes a few times, rolling a new character seems like it will be a real chore. It’s incredibly well done, but it’s also very linear. Once you experience all 70 hours of hard-coded content… what next?

Apologies for the critical nature… I’m not a troll, this is just my personal impressions and fears. Help me see the reason why TSW will exceed my expectations.

@Machinarium – well…that depends on what you’re looking for, really (and I’ll note that I sank in more than 70 hours of /played in beta and never got past the first third of the game, so figure more like 150-200 hours). There’s 3-faction PvP, for those who lean towards the K-axis, plenty of places to poke around off the beaten track for the E-centric (and stuff to do once you get there – I’ve found some quests tucked away in the oddest corners), along with trying to put together the pieces of the lore. Lots of things to be Achieved that go beyond the usual “grind instances to get gear to grind harder instances to bet better gear to grind raids to get gear that’ll be vendor trash when the next patch hits” – figure several hundred hours, minimum, to “level cap” (in this case filling out the entire skill wheel). Socializers…well, a lot of that’s down to the community, but the game’s got some nice spots to hang out in, and some nice shinies to chase, like clothing and titles.

@darkeye: The quest limit is interesting, frustrating at times, but possibly a necessary setting of the Hinder state on players, such that they are pulled out of the ‘grab all quests and zerg them’ mentality. I’ve started making notes on the map when I find a quest that I can’t pickup at the moment, and suddenly I’m using the map for me, rather than as a game guide to the next mob grind.

@Machination: I can’t really comment on it much at the moment, as I’ve only just started playing. I can honestly say that I’ve had quite a few ‘woah!’ moments already though, and I certainly hope they can maintain the standard of quests into the next area of the game and beyond. The nice thing so far is that I’m not in any rush to get to the end game, and as such I’m haven’t made it out of Kingsmouth yet; what’s more, I intend to explore the island a lot more, looking for side quests and such, before I move on.

Having been suckered by the deception of Age of Conan’s Tortage zone, I’m trying not to get my hopes up too much for the rest of the game, but I’m enjoying it tremendously so far, finding myself staying up later than intended because I just wanted to investigate something else I’d stumbled upon.

@Melmoth – as far as I’ve seen (end of Solomon Island/beginning of the next zone) they’ve managed to avoid Tortage Syndrome this time around. Moving from Kingsmouth to the Savage Coast doesn’t feel like moving into an entirely different game the way leaving Tortage did.

I’ve been pleasantly surprised by TSW. After not really being on my radar as anything but ‘another ruinous Funcom launch to observe from afar’ I’m looking forward to playing it for the foreseeable future. It’s about time Funcom learned that you only really get one chance to make a first impression.

I think the biggest potential stumbling block for the game will be much like SWTORs, i.e. how entertaining the game is once you’ve done everything there is to do. Not to mention if they balls up the story aspect like Bioware did.

But on the other hand I’ve already spent more time playing the game this weekend with my friends than I managed in several fucking weeks of trying to play Diablo 3. So I’m pretty content for now.

My only regret is that I couldn’t convince my friends of the superiority of mad science over mad religion and thus ended up having to roll Templar.

There is no “Tortage Effect” this time around. Quality remains consistently high through Kingsmouth, the Savage Coast, Blue Mountain, Scorched Desert, and the City of the Sun God. I’ve not yet seen Transylvania.